Lone Mountain (California)

Lone Mountain is a historic hill in west-central San Francisco, California and the site of the private University of San Francisco (USF) – Lone Mountain Campus, which in turn was previously the San Francisco Lone Mountain College for Women. It was once the location of Lone Mountain Cemetery, a complex encompassing the Laurel Hill, Calvary, Masonic, and Odd Fellows Cemeteries.[3]

Lone Mountain
Lone Mountain from the northeast in 2020
Highest point
Elevation421 ft (128 m)  NAVD 88[1]
Coordinates37°46′45″N 122°27′07″W [2]
Geography
Lone Mountain
LocationSan Francisco, California
Topo mapUSGS San Francisco North

Lone Mountain is one of California's historic hills. The hill is near to the former location of the Odd Fellows Cemetery, Masonic Cemetery, and Greek Orthodox Cemetery. The graves in these cemeteries, along with most graves in San Francisco, were moved to Colma by the 1940s. Lone Mountain is also home to the Angelo J. Rossi Playground and Rossi Pool at Arguello Boulevard and Anza Street.

Lone Mountain is also known as "University Terrace" because of the terraces that connect the two USF campuses.

Cemetery
Lone Mountain

The Lone Mountain Cemetery was opened on May 30, 1854.[4]

In 1867, the cemetery was renamed Laurel Hill Cemetery, after the Laurel Hill garden cemetery in Philadelphia.[4][5]

In the early 20th century, San Francisco voted most of its cemeteries out of existence, ostensibly for public health reasons; after decades of further dispute the transfer of Lone Mountain's forty-seven thousand inhabitants began, primarily to Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in the city of Colma, immediately south of San Francisco. In what writer Harold Gilliam described as "an act of civic vandalism," thousands of crypts and mausoleums were unearthed, the granite and marble dumped along the Pacific shoreline to reinforce seawalls.[6]

The Spanish name for Lone Mountain was El Divisadero, from the Spanish divisadero, which means a point from which one can look far.[7]

Watercolor (1910) by Alice Brown Chittenden. Tents are remnants of camps set up after the 1906 earthquake.
Odd Fellows Cemetery, 1899

See also
  • List of San Francisco, California Hills

References
  1. "Lone Mountain, California". Peakbagger.com. Retrieved 2014-03-04.
  2. "Lone Mountain". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey. Retrieved 2010-05-17.
  3. Kastler, Deanna L. "Cemeteries". Encyclopedia of San Francisco. San Francisco Museum & Historical Society. Archived from the original on 2010-07-22. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
  4. Unmaking Historic Spaces: Urban Progress and the San Francisco Cemetery Debate, 1895-1937, by Tamara Venit Shelton, California History, volume 85 number 3 2008
  5. "Laurel Hill Cemetery". Daily Alta California. April 12, 1867.
  6. Thompson, Walter J. "In The Shadow of Lone Mountain". San Francisco History. SFgenealogy. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
  7. "Appendix B: Streets of San Francisco". San Francisco History. San Francisco Genealogy. Retrieved 2014-03-04.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.